


I would never do you wrong

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:25:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1368835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is to be Lady of Winterfell, and her children will rule not only the North but the whole of the Seven Kingdoms because of her husband’s dual heritage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I would never do you wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theMightyPen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theMightyPen/gifts).



> Happy birthday to my darling Laura, in honour of her entering a new decade ;)

She is to be Lady of Winterfell, and her children will rule not only the North but the whole of the Seven Kingdoms because of her husband’s dual heritage.

Jon does not frighten her, despite the stories about his death and rebirth, despite Ghost and Rhaegal. His dragon flies above the godswood and keens in the night, his direwolf haunts his footsteps and makes no sound, and she knows that they are truly under his control, as much a part of him as the scars around his eye or the rangy step of his walk.

No, her strange not-a-Stark-nor-a-Targaryen husband-to-be does not frighten her, but the weight of expectation, all that will be demanded of her babes,  _that_ terrifies her. Wylla has always tried to be a dutiful daughter and sister and granddaughter, but she fears that she has fallen short more than once, and the thought of her children being shamed as she never was for following in her footsteps is the single most frightening thing she has ever considered.

 

* * *

 

 

Winterfell is vast - oh, White Harbour is bigger, Wylla knows that well, but it is a  _city_  and so it is supposed to be enormous.

It’s less that Winterfell is actually big, that it actually takes up a great area, than it  _feels_ huge, deep and ancient and long, in a time-heavy sort of way. It feels... Not ominous, that is the wrong sense of the place, but there is certainly an expectation in the air of the place, a feeling that she has a great deal to live up to.

It is a heady thing, that expectancy. She wonders if the Starks themselves feel it, or if it solely her domain for now, as an interloper into their tight little family.

Jon shows her about the keep that he never thought to have anxiously, as though unsure she will like it, but she is not sure that she could dislike such a place.  _My son will be lord of this place someday,_ she thinks, and she likes that idea very much and so she likes Winterfell very much.

 

* * *

 

 

The Queen arrives, and Wylla’s anxieties overwhelm her so terribly that she can only hide, which she has done from she was a babe barely able to crawl.

"My sister used hide here," Jon’s voice comes to her from far below - oh, she feels a fool now, but she always used hide in the hidden panel in the back bookcase in the library at home, and clambering up two shelves and a window was the closest she could find here, in Winterfell’s slowly recovering library. "She was a tiny little squirt of a thing, too."

Wylla sticks out her tongue at that, but her hand as well - she knows how fiercely Jon misses his youngest sister, Lady Arya, so she lets him guide her away from this place and coaxes stories of her from him, because speaking of her seems to cheer him when he tends towards melancholy.

Wylla ignores her own melancholy - the Queen loathes her, she knows, for being the alternative to her own proposal to Jon, for being able to bear children, for the gods alone know what other reasons, but she does, and Wylla hates that Jon's aunt hates her.

 

* * *

 

 

The day of their wedding dawns bright and fresh, the sky mercifully clear of snowclouds, which Wylla had dreaded. She dresses with Mother and Wyn and Jon’s other sister, Lady Sansa, in attendance, and the Queen herself comes to inspect her.

There is a black and red cloak over her arm.

"Jon refused legitimisation to his father’s House," she says, looking deeply irritated - whether at Jon for his stubbornness and insistence that he is a Stark before a Targaryen, or at Wylla for not being what the Queen would consider a suitable bride for Jon, Wylla does not know. "But I do not see why you should not have a Targaryen cloak to pass to your children, especially as one of them will bear my name."

Wylla cannot find words to thank her, mostly because she wishes she could pretend that no child of hers will ever be forced south as Uncle Wendel was, but she accepts it gracefully and hides her relief at the Queen’s departure.

Her maiden's cloak is a dream, bright turquoise and stitched in Mother's precise embroidery with a brilliant silver merman between her shoulder blades and down her back. She breathes deep when sweet Papa comes and wraps it around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head and whispering that he  _knows_ she will do them all proud, and she comes near to weeping because how can he know such a thing?

 

* * *

 

 

And then, the wedding.

It is a simple affair, in the godswood and then a blessing in the newly rebuilt sept to honour Wylla’s gods as well as Jon’s, and in the sept…

"But these-"

"The gardeners found a way," he says, setting the mermaid’s lace crown on her hair, the sweet scent of the deep purple-blue-pink flowers a haze around them both. "Or rather, Sansa brought knowledge of how to force the flowers from Highgarden, but the result is the same - this is your home, my lady. I would have you regard it as such."

A crown of her favourite flowers from White Harbour does little to make her feel at home, but Jon’s eagerness to welcome her does everything, and Daenerys Targaryen’s constant antagonism means nothing in the face of that.

 

* * *

 

 

The wedding night is nothing at all that Wylla expected.

Mother had told her all about how bedding was a duty, but there was no duty in Jon's arms - only the sort of pleasure Wylla could not have imagined, and...

And she thinks that mayhaps she understands why some girls court ruin just to have this.

 

* * *

 

 

The Queen departs within a week of the wedding, taking with her near all their guests - Jon's sister among them, to Jon's obvious disappointment, but Wylla saw Lady Sansa in the godswood with her hands cradling her stomach and suspects that the Lady of Highgarden has a very good reason to wish to return to her lord - and leaving Wylla abruptly aware that Winterfell and its environs are now as much hers to govern as the whole of the North is Jon's.

It is slow work to equal the challenge - she relies heavily on the help of the steward and the maester, but they are both encouraging, Maester Samwell in particular, and she learns Winterfell quicker than she would have otherwise with their help.

It does not feel like home, but Wylla thinks that it  _could,_ given time, and that is enough to quell her homesickness, at least for now.

 

* * *

 

 

She japes to Una, who came with her from White Harbour, that her homesickness has become more literal than she thought it could when she empties her stomach three times for the third day in a row, and Una only purses her lips and sends for Maester Samwell.

Jon's eyes are wide and shining with tears when she tells him.

"I never thought to have children," he breathes, winding his arms around her and drawing her close, holding her as though she is made of glass.

 

* * *

 

 

It is not until Wylla receives the letter from the Queen that she remembers one of the conditions placed on her marriage.

_When this babe is born,_ the Queen writes,  _you may nurse it, but once it is weaned it will live in the capital, as my heir._

Jon does not say a word - he simply slips the letter into his pocket, sweeps his cloak around his shoulders and storms outside. Wylla watches from a window as he climbs up to sit in the dip of his dragon's shoulders.

He returns near two weeks later, still furious but with a written vow from the Queen that she will not demand their children of them. 

(But this babe  _will_ have to learn to rule someday, and so Wylla knows in her heart that she will one day have to say goodbye to her first-born, mayhaps for forever.)

 

* * *

 

 

Their first child is a girl, tiny and perfect with eyes of purplish-blue and hair like cornsilk, and Wylla thinks to name her Lyanna, for Jon's mother.

"No," Jon says, looking down into their little one's face, "let's give her a name all her own."

They decide on Liselle, and she is anointed in the sept to seal it as her name, because she must keep the Seven if she is to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

She is not two moons old before offers for her hand begin arriving. Jon burns every single one of them and does not acknowledge even one.

The Queen writes and tells him he must, so he writes refusal after refusal, and Wylla fears more than ever because how are they to choose a husband for their Lissy who will honour her as is her due? Who is there that might be willing to sit at her right hand and bow to her will?

 

* * *

 

 

The Queen takes the decision out of their hands  _and_ settles the unrest in Dorne in one swoop - Arianne Martell's second child, a boy named Elias, is barely a year Lissy's elder, and, being Dornish, will be well used to a woman in power when the time comes for him to wed her.

It is better than Wylla could have hoped for, but not  _all_ she could have hoped for. If Lissy's husband is from outside the North, that is one less reason for her to come home when she ascends to the throne, after all.

 

* * *

 

"I spoke with Sam today," Jon says, leaning against the doorframe. Wylla is alone in her bedchamber, Una having taken Lissy to settle her for the night. "He says that you were long ago healed from Liselle's birth, and in fact scolded me for some imagined slight against you because I was so misinformed."

It is true that she  _healed_ \- or at least, was declared fully healed by Maester Samwell - over two moons ago, but just because it is safe for her to once more lie with Jon does not mean that she wishes to.

Oh, no, that's all wrong. She wishes to, but she is so shy of the changes her pregnancy wrought on her body that she cannot bring herself to share his bed.

His hands are cool and gentle when he tips her face up towards his own.

"My silly wife," he chides gently, "did you think I would not want you?"

Yes, she did, but he sets about proving her wrong with great intent - his kisses are warm, hot, and linger deliciously as he strips her easily of her robe and nightgown, as he shrugs out of his doublet.

He must pull away to tug his shirt over his head, and she whines in protest and sets to kissing the newly exposed skin, the scars left by his traitor brothers and the other scars left by Others, skin mottled from old frostbite and seared by old flames, and he groans, low in his throat, and sweeps her suddenly from the floor to the bed.

His fingers seem even cooler than before as they trace the webbing of pinkish-silver lines on her belly and breasts and hips, but his tongue is burning hot when it follows them.

The wool of his breeches is rough when she wraps her legs around his hips, and he laughs against the hollow of her throat while she whimpers and bucks under him, a laugh that trails off into a snarl when she tugs his breeches open and tugs his cock out.

"Please," she pleads, but he whispers " _Soon"_ against her mouth and kisses south once more.

She wonders if other men enjoy kissing cunt as much as her husband does. She doubts it very much, and pities all their wives.

He holds her as she shudders, cradles her gently to his chest and smooths his hand up and down her back, kissing her hair and the edge of her ear and her temple and her shoulder, and he laughs once more - rough this time, rough and deep - as she shoves him hard onto his back and clambers on top of him.

"Say it," she gasps as she sinks onto him, drawing him as deep inside herself as she can. " _Say_ it."

"I want you," he grits out, fingers digging into her hips and other hand twisting to stroke her nub. "I will always want you."

Wylla calls his name as she comes the second time, and he cries out hers when he finishes, and when he sleeps like the dead on the pillow beside her own, she wonders if this is what love feels like.

 

* * *

 

 

Torrhen is born when Liselle is just barely two, as dark as she is fair, and while Wylla thought she could never love anyone as much as she loves her daughter, she feels as if all the love in the world cannot equal what she feels for each of her children.

Jon takes to carrying them both about, Lissy on his hip and Torr tucked into the crook of his elbow, and he is always the one to bring them to Wylla when Torr needs feeding. 

She wonders if he, like her, wants Lissy and Torr to know one another as well as they can before they are forced apart.

 

* * *

 

 

"What is a queen, Mama?"

She does not know how to explain to Lissy, but she tries - she tells her stories of Good Queen Alysanne, brave Queen Nymeria, strong Queen Rhaella (for what woman could not be strong, to survive marriage to a madman such as Jon's grandfather?). She tells her stories of Lady Catelyn Stark, of her own mother, of Lady Donella Hornwood, of Maege Mormont and all her girls. She speaks of Shireen Baratheon and Melisandre of Asshai and Arianne Martell and even of Daenerys Targaryen, of every strong woman she can think of.

Liselle is already so entirely her own person that Wylla cannot imagine her daughter being anything  _but_ a strong woman, a good queen, but having examples to follow cannot hurt, surely?

 

* * *

 

 

Jon brings her flowers - not mermaid's lace as he did in the sept so long ago, and not the blue winter roses that make his eyes sharpen, but bright, honest flowers that cheer her even on those days when she feels as if nothing has that power.

He is too good to her, she sometimes feels, sweet and adoring even when she stops dying her hair and it turns out that it has faded from the same cornsilk-blonde as Liselle's to a soft golden-white, even when she pouts at how her breasts sag once beautiful Rhaena has been weaned, even on those days when she is consumed with grief over Liselle's upcoming sixteenth nameday and ensuing departure for King's Landing.

And then, Liselle comes to her herself.

 

* * *

 

 

"Papa made me promise not to tell, for fear it would come to naught" she whispers, leaning her head on Wylla's shoulder and staring into the fire with her. "But Mama, his dragon - it has an egg, one Papa says is for me. Is that not wonderful?"

 

 

Wylla may have never feared Jon's dragon, but the Queen's has always terrified her, and she wonders how it is that this egg Jon's dragon has apparently laid might be hatched without the terrible sacrifices usually demanded for such a thing.

She understands when Jon and Lissy bring the egg to Winterfell - it is not stone, as the eggs in all the books Sam helped her find were. It is warm, and vibrant, and just as alive as her sweet girl.

"Do you see, Mama?" Lissy says, enthusiasm bubbling over so much that she takes Wylla by the hands and swings her around and around the great hall. "I can visit as often as I like, if I have a dragon!"

Torr and Rhaena do not fully understand, Wylla knows, but they share Lissy's enthusiasm and join in her mad dance. How can Wylla be unhappy when her babes are so elated?

 

* * *

 

 

And Lissy does visit - even when she is Liselle of House Targaryen, the first of her name, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, rider of Wavedancer and mother to sweet babes of her own, all with their father's night-dark hair but Lissy's curious eyes, she visits as regularly as her duties allow. 

Wylla's favourite thing in all the world will forever remain seeing Jon and their children together, sitting in a huddle on her hearthrug as they plot some mischief or other, even when Jon's hair is silver with age, not with Targaryen blood, and he can hardly stand up from the floor without Torr's help for the pains of his old wounds.

And to think she feared losing Lissy. How could she  _ever_ lose one of her babes?

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Make You Feel My Love' by Adele.


End file.
